


Day 22- Infection

by Broken_Clover



Series: Goretober 2018 [22]
Category: Guilty Gear
Genre: Alternate Ending, Blood and Injury, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Fever, Gen, Infection, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-14 17:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16496648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Broken_Clover/pseuds/Broken_Clover
Summary: If dying was supposed to be this drawn-out and painful, Bedman never would have run away.





	Day 22- Infection

Bare feet staggered across the ground in an awkward, pained gait. The undersides were scratched up and raw from the lack of protection, an appearance matched by scraped arms and legs and torn clothing. All the while, a hand weakly grasped at the stained bandage wrapped around his left leg.

Bedman had no idea where he was. Mostly, that was due to the fact that there wasn’t anything around him that he could recognize from memory. A significant part of _that_ was because no matter how hard he squinted to focus, the world appeared to be swimming before his eyes.

A hot, tired whine escaped his throat as he limped. How long had been wandering like this? He’d lost count of the days. He just kept walking and walking until he passed out, and when he woke up, he started walking again, ignoring the pain in his body and the gnawing pit of hunger in his stomach. No endgoal, as long as he was as far away from Ariels and Illyria as humanly possible.

Somewhere in the incoherent swirl of scenery, he could hear the sound of rushing water over the blood pounding in his ears. He stumbled towards the noise blindly, until a ribbon of blue finally appeared in front of him. A stream.

Just the feeling of cool water splashing against his ankles reminded him of how absolutely burning hot his body felt. It took all of his willpower to not immediately hurl himself into the water. Instead, he reached down and half-blindly tried to find the bandage’s edge.

He couldn’t remember where exactly he’d found it- perhaps stolen, or perhaps fashioned out of a piece of trash that he’d found. The last few days had been a blurry mess, even before he started having a difficult time seeing where he was going. Oftentimes, his mind felt just as fuzzy as his surroundings, but he knew that it had been too long without cleaning himself off.

The thin material clung to his skin as he peeled it off, making him hiss in pain. Caked-on blood and pus ran up and down the entire lower limb, growing brighter and fresher around a deep, jagged cut that extended all the way down from the knee to the ankle. It was little more than a crimson line in his vision, but he could feel the heat radiating off of it.

_‘Getting worse…’_ The thought floated by in his mind, only lasting a moment before the pain flared and blocked out any coherent thought as he prodded the wound’s edge.

It was infected, he knew, and very badly at that. But where could he go to to treat it? He was a wanted criminal, no doubt, and would be caught and sent to jail (or, more probable, the gallows) as soon as he showed his face anywhere in Illyria. And he’d run away from Ariels, so going back to her was nothing short of a death sentence at best.

Ariels…The amount of anger he felt when he thought about her made his head hurt. How could he have been so stupid?! She had been stringing him along, playing him for a fool for so long, and he hadn’t the slightest idea. He had been too dense to see what was right in front of him. Nothing but a puppet.

Bedman wasn’t sure what he had been trying to accomplish, running away. The only reason Ariels hadn’t been able to immediately grab him and do whatever she wanted to do as punishment for his failure was because she had just let him go. It would have been an easy task. He hadn’t walked for a long time, and his first run was little more than a hobbling stumble. If it couldn’t have been more embarrassing, he tripped over some of the scrap remains of his bedframe and sliced his leg open. He wondered if it had been an act of mercy, but he only now realized that she had been expecting him to die anyway.

Thinking was painful. He felt too sore and sweaty to think. He stumbled into the stream and immediately crumpled into the ankle-deep water. Just by sheer luck, he managed not to split his head open on a rock in the process.

The water was pleasantly chilly as it flowed past, immediately starting to soak his clothing. Part of him wondered if he should have taken them off before getting in, but now he felt too tired to get back up and bother. Maybe, at least, he should have dropped his glasses off on the shore, but they hadn’t been serving much purpose lately, with the hairline cracks making it even harder to see than just dealing with the feverish delirium. Besides, they were dirty, too. Might as well just have washed everything all at once.

He could feel his heart beating in his leg. He hoped that the stream was at least doing a half-assed job of washing out the ragged cut. Any sort of shower had been out of the question, so it seemed that this was the best he was going to get.

Just sitting in the water felt like heaven. Bedman didn’t care about what was going to happen later on. He just wanted to lie where he was, relishing in the only relief he had from the fevers so far.

He didn’t have any idea how long it had been before he was interrupted. Despite the tranquil atmosphere that he’d finally found, there wasn’t anything calming about the dark shadow looming over his body.

“Nhh?”

There was enough energy in his body to turn his head to look, but not much more. The hazy vision offered little more than a vague, blurry figure, standing silhouetted by the blazing midday sunlight.

A person? No, it was too big to be a person. If it was an animal or a Gear, it probably would have been attacking him by now.

…Was he dying? Was he staring down the grim reaper now, too weak to run away anymore?

The strange figure continued to stand there, before hunching down to scoop up his body with too-long arms. Bedman couldn’t bring himself to care too much. The cold water had just made him sleepy. He didn’t resist at all as he was picked up, merely looking on blankly. It was still difficult to see, but from the closer proximity, he could just make out some sort of protrusion around the thing’s head.

Perhaps it was the halo of an angel, or the horns of a devil. The latter seemed more likely. Although, for a brief moment before everything went black, he could swear that the curves became the crumpled edges of a paper bag.


End file.
